Book Review: RESTful .NET by Jon Flanders

As Jon Flanders explains early on in his enjoyable book, Representational State Transfer (REST) is a set of guidelines on how to architect your web applications. Because it is tightly aligned with HTTP, architectures that follow the principles of REST are able to hook into a number of benefits that come built into the technologies that surround the web.

Flanders delves into REST briefly, but he does it well enough that you understand its value even if you haven't consumed the groundbreaking book RESTful Web Services.

The transition to programming REST using .NET is just as nicely handled. Windows Communication Foundation is a sprawling technology precisely because it is a model that covers a wide variety of programming paradigms (it supports a multitude of protocols like messaging, HTTP, SOAP, etc).

There is a quick tutorial on implementing HTTP services using WCF - which serves to remind us that WCF isn't only tightly coupled to SOAP. The rest of the book is divided up into chapters that zero in on specific implementation using WCF: Read-only services, Read/Write services, RESTful services and Feeds. Flanders also covers both server side implementation and client-side consumption of the services. There is coverage of Ajax and Silverlight clients and a short chapter on using WCF Workflow to deliver the REST services.

The value of the book is that it zeroes in on the essentials and provides very lean tutorials

RESTful .NET's biggest strength is that it is concise, clear and lean. To that point, you need the basics of HTTP, SOAP, WCF, XML, C# and (briefly) ASP in place to fully appreciate the book. The most valuable chapter for me was the one in which Flanders covers programming feeds. But there is enough diversity in terms of types of constructs implemented, that you'll find something of value here.

Highly recommended if you are a Windows Web programmer and have a growing interest in REST.

Book Review: The Manga Guide to Statistics

Shin Takahashi’s The Manga Guide to Statistics A Manga Guide to Statistics contains – as advertized – both Manga and Statistics. What exactly is Manga? It’s a style of drawing that was birthed and refined in eponymous Japanese comics. Its characterized by a heightened display of emotions (think: plenty of emanata), hip characters and dramatic framing. But above all, Manga characters look cute – often achieved by drawing large eyes that dominate a face and denoting the nose and mouth with minimal lines.

There is plenty of cute in Takahashi’s book – courtesy of crackerjack illustrator Iroha Inoue.

The Manga Guide to Statistics has a loose plot that drives exploration of the subject of Statistics. Rui is a schoolgirl, prone to flights of romantic fancy and subject to bouts of panic around Statistics. One fine day her father brings a colleague home – the dashing Mr. Igarashi (characterized by bright eyes and wispy, long hair). Igarashi gives Rui an informal introduction to Statistics. And in an effort to win Igarashi’s heart, Rui pesters her father to arrange for lessons for her.

This her surprised father does dutifully. Only Rui’s instructor is the geeky Mamoru Yamamoto. This setback only spurs Rui on to really focus on mastering the subject. Tremendous lessons ensue that introduce Rui to concepts like Frequency Distribution, Mean, Median, Standard Deviation, Estimation Theory, Cross Tabulatiions, Normalization, Standard Scores, Probability, Corelation and Hypothesis. Will Rui learn Statistics and win the love of Mr. Igarashi? Can Mamoru keep up with Rui and help her complete her mission? Hey, is Mamoru really that bad looking?

The Manga Guide to Statistics has lovely, crackling illustrations. Inoue keeps the reader engaged with panels that burst with energy, drama queen depictions of mood and spanking fashion and style. Often a lot of text and numbers enter the comic because the nature of the subject demands it. But overall, you don’t lose the accessibility of a comic book.

In what I thought was a stroke of genius, Takahashi shows us how to apply the concepts in the book using Microsoft Excel. This makes a lot of sense because Excel is either widely accessible or functionally mirrored by other software (such as say: Google Docs).

The inherent accessibility of its comic book format makes The Manga Guide to Statistics an able introduction to Statistics as well as a handy reference for those who want to revisit the subject.

Harald Mante: The Photograph

Harald Mante's The Photograph (Rocky Nook, 2008) - translated from German by Thomas C Campbell III is my first text on picture composition and design. I've read books about the technologies involved with photography and books that explain why a particular photograph really works.

But Mante's book explains the principles behind good photographs. And the value of this is that it gets you past understanding why a particular picture looks good and into how you can replicate the success of that photograph.

How exactly does Mante go about doing it? He breaks his large book down into the basic elements of interest in a picture. There are five major sections on photo composition in the book dealing with points, lines, shapes, universal contrasts and color contrasts.

Take the first section on points. Mante starts by discussing pictures with a single point of interest and how its position can change the perception of a photograph. Then he introduces additional points, carefully explaining how collections and groups adds perception options to the composition.

All through his text, Mante deploys copious photographs - some almost thumbnail size. I found this to be hugely useful because it gave me lots of data points for each of the principles described by Mante. There are multiple elements at play in each of the pictures, but instead of explaining all of them at once, you tend to focus only on the ones being described. This allows the reader to understand the mechanics contributed to the picture by the immediate principle alone.

In the next section Mante explores the use of lines (real and perceived) in photographs. By the time the next section rolls around on shapes, the book really pops because you can see how the various elements of points, lines and shapes are interacting within a photograph.

What I enjoyed most in the final two sections on contrast is that while the discussion can tend to be obtuse, Mante offers a lot of practical details. In one instance Mante talks about how wide-angle lenses and long-angle lenses contribute to contrast in a picture. We all know that happens but Mante articulates it in a way that it is reusable by photographers.

All wide-angle lenses support the impression of spaciousness on the two-dmensional surface by exaggerating the perspective and the sizes of the objects between the foreground and background. Long focal-length lenses can convey impressions of depth only by contrasting the sharply reproduced detail in the plane of focus with the blurred, out-of-focus background or by showing shapes that overlap ambigously.

This level of practical details is excellent.

I had some minor problems with the book. While I appreciated the photographs in both quality, volume and relevance - I wish they had been captioned exclusively to drive home the underlying principle. Because Mante describes theory, the book tends to be difficult to read in long stretches - so I would recommend keeping aside enough time to absorb the information in it.

Book Review: The Digital Photography Companion

Derrick Story's book - The Digital Photography Companion - is sized conveniently enough, like a slightly oversize mass market paperback. And the intent is obvious. Story wants to create a manual that is easy to take along with you pretty much wherever you go (hint: vacations). He follows it up by writing in a conversational style and includes lots of bright color pictures that further increases the reader's engagement.

Story covers both digital SLRs and compact cameras. And in an excellent opening chapter, he explains the major differences between the two. Some part of the audience for this book might find the information on image sensors to be too technical - and for them there is enough practical advice to help choose a camera. But for those looking for a more in-depth explanation, this chapter is a great hook.

Right after that Story lays out the features and functionalities of digital cameras in alphabetical order. This I felt put the book in camera manual territory. I own an old Canon Powershot G3 and while Story was describing the features (somewhat mechanically) I felt his book offered no more value than my manual (which is very well written by the way and a text that this book squarely competes with).

Once we are past this alphabetical cataloging, the book really starts to shine. How does it do that? By offering lots of practical advice on how to create take great pictures, sometimes by replicating studio settings with low-tech contraptions. For example, Story shows you how to devise your own light meter, shoot in rain, bounce light off household reflective surfaces and trick your camera's white balance.

Besides being very useful, these tips also offer terrific insights into how the digital camera works. It enhances your understanding of the instrument you are working with.

Later the book also contains a useful chapter on how to post-process your pictures using software. Story covers a number of popular packages such as Apple iPhoto, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and Microsoft Expression Media. I would have really liked to see Story cover some web based image editing applications in order to get in touch with Web 2.0 technologies. There is also coverage of printing your pictures - a detail in the book that I really appreciated. And instead of trying to cover printer features and explain how to choose a printer in depth, Story keeps the focus on the camera by creating a short table with specific printer recommendations for different types of users.

LinkedIn RSS Feeds

LinkedIn - which has been rolling out features of late - has just announced RSS feeds for network updates. If you are a LinkedIn user I recommend you try it out to stay informed of what is going in your network.

You can check your network updates using a on-site page generated by LinkedIn (try clicking on this link to see yours). You can subscribe to LinkedIn RSS feeds by clicking on this link.

New Blogger resources for pictures

If you're a blogger like me and looking for pictures to brighten up your posts, there are a couple of new resources I've found in the last week that look really promising.

First there is compfight. Its a search tool that will take your keywords and dig through all the tags, file names and relevant information on Flickr and return the results to you. There are several things that are cool about this search compared to others I've seen that mine the Flickr repository.

compfight does a good, fast job at searching. It returns results in the form of a set of thumbnails - which makes selecting the right result to view much easier. This is along the lines of some search tools like Exalead that return thumbnails in a results set. In addition you have the option of searching through images that are under a Creative Commons license, thus reducing your exposure to unwanted usage of images.

The other tool is picapp which lets you search their own repository. You can use any image returned through picapp's search in your blogs freely. They have a lot of high quality stock images and also a number of more popular pictures as well. For example, if you did a search on Aishwarya (Rai), you'd get a number of images that you can plug into your posts without worrying about copyright violation.

A command based program launcher

If you have a Start Menu that is full of programs, you're probably just as frustrated as I am when it comes to starting them. You have to click on the button, then scroll up and down trying to find the group folder you want.

This need to hunt programs down from weeds of stuff results in all kinds of program launchers being devised for quick starts. However, if you want to launch something which you use only occasionally and isn't in the launcher (because they are constrained by real-estate), then you are stuck with the old problem.

Recently I started using Enso Launcher from Humanized. This utility in essence indexes the program names in your Start folder and makes them available for recall via typing instead of clicking.

The way you use it is pretty simple: you keep the Caps Lock key pressed down and start typing the name of a program you want to launch. Say I want to launch Adobe Illustrator, I hold the Caps Lock key down and type in Adobe. At this point the Enso Launcher will start suggesting names based on keyword matches with the programs in your Start folder.

You can either type out the full name or type in enough characters to narrow down your choice to a few and then scroll and pick the right one. The only awkward thing about this is that you have to keep the Caps Lock key depressed all the time you are doing this. This can lead to some funny accidents. But the only other option would be to launch the Enso Launcher first (or give it focus - thus requiring it to run somewhere on the desktop).

With a key recall, it can run invisibly and pop up only when called on. The choice of the Caps Lock key is a good one once you get past the idea that you have to keep a key down during its operation. For those of us who know have learned to type via instruction - this works very well although I would think hunt and peckers might have a rougher time with it.

In any case, I'm glad I found the utility and I'm only too happy to use it.